Frightened Boy, Scott Kelly [book suggestions .TXT] 📗

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“Erika!” I exclaimed.

“Eureka,” Escher said.

“Clark!” she appeared from behind the door and hugged me close. “I’m glad you’re okay. I saw you on the news. You were the most frightened terrorist I’ve ever seen,” she said. Then her voice dropped. “I heard what happened to Guts. I’m so sorry I never…”

Her eyes moistened as she hugged me. I couldn’t say a word.

“See?” Escher said. “She’s fine. Yay.”

I noticed a long chain connecting Erika’s foot to the large wooden desk that took up most of the space in the small office.

“She’s a troublemaker,” Whisper said. “We had to chain her up.”

“Well, can’t you unchain her now?”

“Don’t bother,” Erika said, grinning. She bent over and opened up the lock she had apparently picked in Escher’s absence.

He clucked his tongue, then sat down behind the desk and propped his feet up on it. “Well, we’re all back together now. Frightened Boy, you may be curious as to why I’ve decided to let you live. It’s because I have plans for you…or rather, I have plans, and someone must carry them out, and I’d rather risk you than someone I care about.”

“Okay,” I said, apprehensive. I didn’t really want anymore adventure. I felt lucky enough to still be alive, and I had Erika, and that was enough. I was already thinking about exits.

“First,” Escher said, “we have this for you. It was Sam’s idea, really, but I like it. Hats are a necessity. They protect us from Little Brother’s all seeing eyes. Not to mention, it’ll help distract people from your face, which recently has become fairly famous—or infamous, as the case may be.”

He pulled a starched red baseball cap from the desk and tossed it to me. It was gaudy and looked like something a little kid might wear in a Norman Rockwell painting. There was an insignia on the front: "The Waves."

“Who are The Waves?” I asked.

“Long story,” Escher said dismissively.

“So where’s my apple pie?” I asked, putting the cap on my head. Erika frowned at it.

“It makes you look even more American,” Whisper said. “Not that we aren’t all American—but you? You embody it.”

“You’re everything that is wrong,” grinned Escher. “With a dash of something extra, I think, or else you wouldn’t still be alive.”

Erika’s fingers closed around my hand, and I thought I knew what that “something extra” was. I was a God to someone, after all, no matter how ridiculous the pretense behind that belief was.

“Smile, Frightened Boy. You’re going to do some great things for our cause. You’re going to visit our friends at WNBB. You will give them this disk to play on the air. Hopefully, you will then escape and return here to meet me.”

Escher reached into his desk and pulled out a compact disk in a clear jewel case. He tossed it to me. I failed to catch it, and it bounced from the palm of my hand, my fingers stupidly clasping air a moment too late. I scooped it up from the floor, my cheeks beginning to flush.

“Why? What’s this about?”

“WNBB broadcasts the news throughout Banlo Bay. They are nothing but puppets operating under Little Brother, and haven’t spoken a true word in years. This is one of the ways my nemesis controls the city, and I’d like to offer a little antidote. Something small.

“You don’t have to go tonight,” he said, “and when you do go, you can take her with you. You’ll be accompanied by Mal, as well. If you should happen to abscond with my very valuable disk there, or if you try to summon help from the authorities, he has been told to kill you both, no questions asked—not that Little Brother wouldn’t do the same. Your chaperone doesn’t talk a lot, so I wouldn’t try and reason with him. And he'll kill her first.” He emphasized his point with a lazy finger aimed at Erika.

“So who is he?” Erika asked.

“His name is Mal. He has a peculiar set of tattoos on his forehead, and he does one thing and one thing only.”

“Murders people,” Whisper said.

“Well, there are an awful lot of them, and someone has to do it,” Escher smirked. “I’ve found Mal to be very useful. Anyway, that’s all for you two. Just remember—be there in time for the morning news.”

There was no real bargaining with Escher. He seemed amused by how flustered I was.

“Okay, we’re done here,” Escher said, wrecking my train of thought with his two cents on the track. “Send Mal in on your way out.”

Erika apparently had questions as well, and I had to drag her out of the office by the hand. I felt like the day’s adventures had finally ended. Finally stopped running from Escher, and for once, I had several hours ahead of me in which nothing was urgent.

The dark-skinned, tattooed man stood outside Escher’s office, arms crossed. This was the Stranger who I watched murder several policemen with his bare hands, through the monitors in Tasumec tower. Creepy.

“Escher wants you in the office,” I said to the assassin. He stared at me with coal-black eyes. The tattoos on his forehead barely stood out against the dark pigment of his skin.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Erika asked.

He pointed at his forehead.

“What about it?” Erika asked.

“I think we’re supposed to read between the quotes. Read his mind,” I said.

“Oh, right. The quotation marks. I get it. Hah.”

Mal pushed his way past us. I watched him stalk off—the man who might kill us tomorrow. He moved smoothly, lithely; every muscle in his body was visible. He had the figure of a gymnast or an Olympic swimmer.

I should have been terrified, but I felt detached—as though my brain was all out of whatever chemical instilled fear. As many times as I almost died in the past week, I was all out of give-a-shit.

*

Erika and I slept huddled up on the fourth floor of the repurposed office building, holding each other together in a cubicle. It was as private a place as we could find; every floor we stepped into seemed to house a few Strangers. Some were playing cards, talking, or drinking together, and they all had one thing in common: they stopped whatever they were doing and stared until we left.

“I knew I’d see you again. I have faith,” Erika said. Her voice was barely a whisper in my ear.

“I wish you’d knock that off,” I said. I couldn’t express it to her, but I wanted her to just like me for me, without the gimmick. I wasn't in the mood for art, or to be worshipped.

“I wouldn’t be much of a disciple with an attitude like that.”

“Seriously, what have I done that is worth worshipping?”

“Everything you do is worth worshipping,” she answered. She paused for a moment. “However, your question raises an interesting philosophical debate. That is, does God know that what He does is special at all? Is God even aware of everything He is responsible for—which is, in fact, everything?”

“There’s nothing special about me,” I said.

“You tried to rescue me from Escher,” she said.

“Tried and failed.”

“You succeeded eventually, and you managed to avoid Escher for a pretty long time.”

“That was The Voice,” I said.

“The Voice?”

“It’s a guy I met, uh…well, on the phone. They call him 'Little Brother'. Apparently, according to Sam and Escher, he is somehow responsible for everything I’ve ever been afraid of.”

She smiled, and I could feel it next to my ear. She wrapped an arm across my chest. My heart jumped, and my pulse raced.

“He can’t be that great. I’ve never felt particularly afraid of anyone,” Erika said.

“Yeah, I’ve noticed. How do you do that?”

“I’m just not,” Erika said. “They’re just people…y’know, humans. Plus, I have you.”

For some reason, that idea bothered me.

“We need to focus. We have a big day tomorrow. I have no idea how we’re going to make them play that disk.”

“We’ll be fine,” she said. “It seems easy enough to me. We’ll go and ask.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but her reassurance comforted me. “So, do you feel like you’re getting what you want out of worshipping me?” I asked.

“Oh, definitely. The Bhagavad-Gita teaches that the only way to live life without accruing bad karma—or sin—is to do everything out of duty for one’s God. In that way, even the sinful acts you commit aren’t actually sins, because you are only following instructions, the way a soldier never gets tried for murder after a war is over. I couldn’t have picked a better god if I had invented him myself. ”

You did, I thought but dared not say.

“If we survive this,” I said, “I mean, this whole Escher and the end-of-society thing, will you still worship me?”

Erika shrugged noncommittally. “Nothing is forever, Clark.”

God must have felt this way when man first discovered fire.

*

Erika woke up that morning to find me still awake. “What’s the matter?” she asked as we searched about our little hovel for our meager possessions. I owned one cell phone that couldn’t be recharged, the red baseball cap that Escher had assigned me, and now (by her own insistence), Erika.

“Nothing,” I said. I’d been thinking about Guts for a while. The depression did a good job of covering up the confusion and frustration and dread.

She rubbed my arm above the elbow. “Seriously? Nothing?”

“It’s…it’s nothing. I’m just stressed.” I didn’t want to bring her down. She hadn’t really known him.

She rubbed my back. I moved away from her. I had other things to think about—like dying.

“How are we going to do this today?” I asked.

“Improvisation,” she laughed. “We’ll just go with the flow.”

I didn’t think she was taking this very seriously.

“Aren’t you worried about getting captured…or killed?”

“In my experience, there is a certain way things are supposed to work out. Just relax, Clark, and let events unfold like they’re supposed to. Besides, I trust you. I know you’ll lead me in the right direction.”

I had no idea where to go or how to get there, and my legs felt weak and shaky as I descended down the flights of stairs that led to Escher’s office. When we reached the bottom we laid eyes on Mal, who was standing in a particularly menacing fashion at the fire exit—I suppose making sure we didn’t try to escape.

I noticed a single weapon on his body, but it didn’t look like it was made for combat. A rusted dagger in a leather sheath rested on a chain around his neck.

I didn’t try to talk to him this time, as he didn’t seem inclined to do much speaking anyway. Instead, I went straight to Escher’s office, keeping Erika tightly in tow. Mal made me nervous for her.

I pulled open the door. Whisper was seated at his chair with a pale cat in front